A SUMMER IN A CAÑON & POLLY OLIVER'S PROBLEM (Illustrated). Kate Douglas Wiggin

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СКАЧАТЬ of the poetry of our late American history, full of strange and thrilling scenes, glowing with interest and dramatic fire.

      I know a little girl who crossed the plains in that great ungeneraled army of fifteen or twenty thousand people that made the long and weary journey to the land of gold in 1849. She tells her children now of the strange, long days and months in the ox-team, passing through the heat and dust of alkali deserts, fording rivers, and toiling over steep mountains. She tells them how at night she often used to lie awake, curled up in her grey blanket, and hear the men talking together of the gold treasures they were to dig from the ground—treasures, it seemed to her childish mind, more precious than those of which she read in The Arabian Nights. And from a little hole in the canvas cover of the old emigrant wagon she used to see the tired fathers and brothers, worn and footsore from their hard day’s tramp, some sleeping restlessly, and others guarding the cattle or watching for Indians, who were always expected, and often came; and the last thing at night, when her eyes were heavy with sleep, she peered dreamily out into the darkness to see the hundreds of gleaming camp-fires, which dotted the plain as far as the eye could reach.

      You will have noticed that this first week of camp-life was a quiet one, spent mostly by the young people in getting their open-air home comfortably arranged, making conveniences of all kinds, becoming acquainted with the cañon so far as they could, and riding once or twice to neighbouring ranches for hay or provisions.

      Dr. Winship believed in a good beginning; and, as this was not a week’s holiday, but a summer campaign, he wanted his young people to get fully used to the situation before undertaking any of the exciting excursions in prospect. So, before the week was over, they began to enjoy sound, dreamless sleep on their hard straw beds, to eat the plain fare with decided relish, to grow a little hardy and brown, and quite strong and tough enough for a long tramp or horseback ride.

      After a religious devotion to cold cream for a few nights, Polly had signified her terrible intention of ‘letting her nose go.’ ‘I disown it!’ she cried, peeping in her tiny mirror, and lighting up her too rosy tints with a tallow candle. ‘Hideous objick, I defy thee! Spot and speckle, yea, burn to a crisp, and shed thy skin afterwards! I care not. Indeed, I shall be well rid of thee, thou—h’m—thou—well, leopard, for instance.’

      One beautiful day followed another, each the exact counterpart of the one that had preceded it; for California boys and girls never have to say ‘wind and weather permitting’ from March or April until November. They always know what the weather is going to do; and whether this is an advantage or not is a difficult matter to settle conclusively.

      New England boys affirm that they wouldn’t live in a country where it couldn’t rain any day it felt like it, and California lads retort that they are glad their dispositions are not ruined by the freaks of New England weather. At all events, it is a paradise for would-be campers, and any one who should assert the contrary would meet with energetic opposition from the loyal dwellers in Camp Chaparral.

      Bell returned one day from a walk which she had taken by herself, while the other girls were off on some errand with the Doctor. After luncheon she drew them mysteriously into the square tent, and lowered the curtains.

      ‘What is it?’ Polly whispered, with an anxious expression of countenance. ‘Have you lost your gold thimble again, or your temper, or have you discovered a silver mine?’

      ‘I have found,’ she answered mysteriously, ‘the most beautifully secret place you ever beheld. It will be just the spot for us to write and study in when we want to be alone; or it will even do for a theatre; and it is scarcely more than half a mile up the cañon.’

      ‘How did you find it?’ asked Margery.

      ‘As I was walking along by the brookside, I saw a snake making its way through the bushes, and—’

      ‘Goodness!’ shrieked Polly, ‘I shall not write there, thank you.’

      ‘Goose! Just wait a minute. I looked at it, and followed at a distance; it was a harmless little thing; and I thought, for the fun of it, I would just push blindly on and see what I should find, because we are for ever walking in the beaten path, and I long for something new.’

      ‘A bad instinct,’ remarked Madge, ‘and one which will get you into trouble, so you should crush it in its infancy.’

      ‘Well, I took up my dress and ploughed through the chaparral, until I came, in about three minutes of scratching and fighting, to an open circular place about as large as this tent. It was exactly round, which is the curious part of it; and in the centre was one stump, covered with moss and surrounded by great white toadstools. How any one happened to go in there and cut down a single tree I can’t understand, nor yet how they managed to bring out the tree through the tangled brush. It is so strange that it seems as if there must be a mystery about it.’

      ‘Certainly,’ said Margery promptly. ‘A tragedy of the darkest kind! Some cruel wretch has cut down, in the pride and pomp of it beauty, one sycamore-tree; its innocent life-blood has stained the ground, and given birth to the white toadstools which mark the spot and testify to the purity of the victim.’

      ‘Well,’ continued Bell, impressively, ‘I knew I could never find it again; and I wanted so much you should see it that I took the ball of twine we always carry, unrolled it, and dropped the thread all the way along to the brookside, like Phrygia, or Melpomene, or Anemone, or whatever her name was.’

      ‘Or Artesia, or Polynesia, or Euthanasia,’ interrupted Polly. ‘I think the lady you mean is Ariadne.’

      ‘Exactly. Now we’ll take papa to see it, and then we’ll fit it up as a retreat. Won’t it be charming? We’ll call it the Lone Stump.’

      ‘Oh, I like that; it makes me shiver!’ cried Polly. ‘I’m going to write an ode to it at once. Ahem! It shall begin—let me see—

      ‘O lonely tree,

       What cruel “he”

       Did lay thee low?

       Tell us the facts;

       Did cruel axe

       Abuse thee so?’

      ‘Sublime! Second verse,’ said Bell slowly, with pauses between the lines:—

      ‘Or did a gopher,

       The wicked loafer,

       Gnaw at thy base,

       And, doing so,

       Contrive to go,

       And leave no trace?’

      ‘Oh dear!’ sighed Margery; ‘if you will do it, wait a minute.

      ‘O toadstools white,

       Pray give us light

       Upon the question.

       Did gopher gnaw,

       And live in awe

       Of indigestion?’

      ‘Good!’ continued Bell:—

      ‘Or did a man

       Malicious plan

       The good tree’s ruin,

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